Sandy Bridge GPU gets disabled with discrete GPU

We’ve learned one more about Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU and its more interesting graphics part. Sandy Bridge graphics support dual displays, but once you plug in a discrete graphics card in PCIe slot, the Sandy Bridge magic will simply shut down.

At this time, we are not aware of any chance that Intel gets some kind of hybrid mode and use its own Sandy Bridge graphics for non-graphics intensive tasks and then use the discrete graphics for the graphics intensive ones. So, graphics lovers who need more performance than what integrated graphics deliver will be safe, new six series chipsets do have support for external graphics, and some companies might even have dual slots for SLI / Crossfire system.

Gigabyte’s GA P67A-UD7 board will be the one to support both Crossfire and SLI. We wish Intel could come up with hybrid graphics and simply shuts down discrete graphics cards when we don’t need them, Nvidia and AMD already offer such technologies.